(United States Federal Circuit) - Vacated and remanded a decision of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Appeals Board (PTO Board) that certain claims relating to a wireless communications system are not patentable. In vacating and remanding, the Federal Circuit reasoned that the PTO Board did not consider portions of plaintiff’s reply.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Reinstated a patent infringement claim upon finding that the district court's grant of summary judgment resulted from an erroneous claim construction. The patentee accused several telecommunications companies of infringing its patent for an application-aware resource allocator. On appeal, the Federal Circuit agreed with the patentee that the district court construed the patent incorrectly. The panel vacated in relevant part and remanded.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Vacated Patent Trial and Appeal Board decisions invalidating three patents relating to videogame software. The patentee contended that the petitions for inter partes review were time-barred because an alleged real party in interest had been served with a complaint alleging infringement over one year prior to the IPRs' filing dates. Finding possible merit in this argument, the Federal Circuit vacated and remanded for further proceedings.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed a judgment of no interference-in-fact in a patent case involving the CRISPR-Cas9 system for the targeted cutting of DNA molecules. The Federal Circuit found no error in the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's conclusion of no interference-in-fact, in this case pitting the Broad Institute, Inc., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and others against the University of California, the University of Vienna, and others.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that certain patent claims relating to a wireless networking device were invalid as obvious. The Federal Circuit affirmed the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an inter partes review proceeding.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that a pharmaceutical company's patent claims in a multiple sclerosis drug were invalid for obviousness. Several competitors seeking to market a generic version of the same drug raised the issue of obviousness when the company sued them for infringement. In a 2-1 decision, the Federal Circuit affirmed that the patent claims in question were invalid.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Reversed a judgment that a patent for a pharmaceutical product was invalid on the ground of obviousness. The Federal Circuit concluded that obviousness was not proved by clear and convincing evidence.

(United States Federal Circuit) - A company appealed from the determination in an inter partes review that certain claims of its patent directed to dental implants were unpatentable. Affirming, the Federal Circuit concluded that the Patent Trial and Appeal Board did not err in its anticipation finding.

(United States Federal Circuit) - Affirmed that some, but not all, claims in a telecommunications patent were unpatentable as obvious. Finding no error, the Federal Circuit affirmed the determinations made in an review.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Held that a company did not violate a nondisclosure agreement by including particular information in a patent application for a 3D printing process. Affirmed summary judgment against a breach-of-contract claim brought by the other party to the nondisclosure agreement, a distributor of specialty polymers.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that an inventor's sale of an invention to a third party who is obligated to keep the invention confidential can qualify as prior art for purposes of determining the patentability of the invention. The dispute here involved two pharmaceutical companies that disagreed about whether a certain drug was under patent; one of the companies wanted to market a generic version of it. Justice Thomas delivered the unanimous opinion.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - In a dispute between two companies in the agriculture-related biotechnology field, affirmed in part and reversed in part a judgment after a jury trial. The case involved antitrust claims, patent infringement claims and an alleged breach of a confidentiality agreement.

(United States Fifth Circuit) - The Fifth Circuit transferred a case back to the Federal Circuit, from which it had been transferred. The two circuits disagreed about which one was the proper forum for this appeal, which involved a company's claim that a competitor violated antitrust law by obtaining a patent through fraud.

(United States Seventh Circuit) - Affirmed the dismissal of a commercial dispute for lack of personal jurisdiction over the defendant companies, which lacked sufficient contacts with Illinois. The case involved an alleged failure to pay royalties to the owners of certain patent rights.

(United States Supreme Court) - Held that the U.S. Postal Service was barred here from challenging a private company's patent for a method for processing mail. Because federal agencies do not fall within the statutory definition of a person, they are ineligible to petition the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to institute patent review proceedings under the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act of 2011. Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the 6-3 Court.

(California Court of Appeal) - Granted writ of mandate and directed trial court to vacate order granting summary adjudication motion. The appeals court held that the trial court’s per se application of Business and Professions Code section 16600 to the contract in question was incorrect.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Sentence for robbery in the first degree is reversed where defendant's prior conviction for attempt to commit robbery in Washington, D.C. is not the equivalent of a felony in New York and cannot serve as a proper basis for a second felony offender adjudication.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for assault in the second degree is affirmed and the court held that when a new rule is announced during the one-year grace period for filing a notice of appeal, a judgment becomes final 30 days after sentencing where a defendant does not file a timely direct appeal and does not move for leave to file a late notice of appeal under CPL 460.30 (1).

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for attempted robbery and two counts of assault is affirmed where the People met their burden to rebut a presumption of an unduly suggestive array after failing to preserve the computer-generated array of photographs that led to defendant's identification. The court expressly extended the presumption of suggestiveness to the People's failure to preserve a record of computer-generated photo arrays.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a trip and fall action, the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to defendant is reversed where there was dispute as to whether defendant or an adjacent business’s portion of a sidewalk was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an insurance action, in which defendant refused to pay plaintiff more than a single deductable payment following the defense of a class action and resulting settlement involving the county, the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to plaintiff is affirmed where county’s improper strip searches of arrestees over a four-year period constituted multiple occurrences under the insurance policy and defendant is responsible for paying deductibles to plaintiff with respect to each class member.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an injury case, alleging that plaintiff suffered severe mental and physical disabilities from in utero exposure to unleaded gasoline vapor caused by a defective fuel hose, the trial court’s exclusion of plaintiff’s expert witnesses from testifying at trial is affirmed where the experts did not rely on generally accepted principles and methodologies to reach their conclusions.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for criminal possession of a weapon and resisting arrest is affirmed where the trial court did not abuse its discretion in relieving defendant’s attorney and appointing new counsel. Attorney’s employer, New York County Defender Services, represented the key government witness in a separate case arising from the same occurrence and refused to permit defendant’s attorney to search for and potentially call him as a witness.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for course of sexual conduct against a child in the first degree and endangering the welfare of a child are affirmed where defense counsel did not render ineffective assistance by: 1) not calling an expert witness to testify that the absence of physical evidence on the victim three years after the last alleged incident could indicate the victim was never anally raped by defendant; and 2) failing to object to testimony of various prosecution witnesses recalling the victim’s statements that she was being sexually abused.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for criminal possession of a controlled substance is affirmed where: 1) the trial court properly considered the drug factory presumption of Penal Law section 220.25(2); and 2) the decision regarding whether a defendant testifies before the grand jury is a strategic one requiring the expert judgment of counsel, and defense counsel’s refusal to facilitate defendant’s appearance before the grand jury did not amount to per se ineffective assistance of counsel.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for sexual conduct against a child in the first degree is affirmed where the trial court did not commit reversible error in admitting rebuttal testimony intended prove defendant’s sole witness was biased and motivated to fabricate evidence. The Court clarified that the Appellate Division may rely on the record to discern an unarticulated predicate for the trial court’s evidentiary rulings.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Sentence following conviction for criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree is affirmed where the sentencing court properly refused defendant’s request to defer payment of a mandatory surcharge imposed under Penal Law section 60.35 that was not subject to the court’s discretion.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Sentence for robbery in the first degree based on a prior conviction for assault in the first degree is vacated and remanded for resentencing. The Court held that the revocation of probation under Penal Code section 60.01 is not the analogue of an annulment of a sentence and concluded that the original sentencing date controls for the purpose of determining the eligible look-back period in Penal Law section 70.04 for prior conviction sentencing.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a false arrest case contending that police invented a false confession to aid in the prosecution of plaintiff, in violation of 42 U.S.C. section 1983 and New York common law, the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to defendants is: 1) reversed where plaintiff has pleaded sufficient facts to constitute violations of New York's false arrest and malicious prosecution claims and 42 U.S.C. section 1983 claims against individually-named plaintiffs; and 2) affirmed as to the City of New York and New York City Police Department in accordance with Monell v. N.Y.C. Dept. of Soc. Services, 436 U.S. 658 (1978).

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for criminal possession of a weapon in the second and third degrees is vacated and the case remanded where the police’s seizure of defendant’s clothing from a clear hospital bag without a warrant or defendant’s consent violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a real estate and property action, arising after the Manhattan Department of Buildings revoked plaintiff's erroneously-issued permit for a large outdoor advertising sign, the order of the Appellate Division is reversed where: 1) plaintiff did not acquire a vested right to maintain the sign on its property through its reliance on the erroneously issued permit; and 2) the issue of plaintiff's good-faith reliance on the erroneously-issued permit is properly raised in an application for a zoning variance.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for felony murder and rape is reversed where the trial court abused its discretion by precluding the defendant from introducing evidence of third-party culpability and such error was not harmless under the circumstances.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for gang assault and weapons possession is reversed where the admission of a nontestifying codefendant's redacted statement to police violated defendant's rights under the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment, and such error was not harmless.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for robbery in the second degree is reversed where the admission of a non-testifying codefendant's out-of-court statements to establish an element of the crime violated defendant's Sixth Amendment right of confrontation under Bruton v. United States, 391 U.S. 123 (1968).

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for murder in the second degree and related offenses are affirmed where the trial court: 1) properly permitted the People to call a government witness who invoked his Fifth Amendment rights before receiving immunity; 2) properly permitted the government to use a redacted statement for the limited purpose of impeaching its own witness; and 3) did not abuse its discretion by precluding defendant's expert from testifying with regard to the effects of event stress on eyewitness identification.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for murder in the second degree and related offenses are affirmed where the trial court: 1) properly permitted the People to call a government witness who invoked his Fifth Amendment rights before receiving immunity; 2) properly permitted the government to use a redacted statement for the limited purpose of impeaching its own witness; and 3) did not abuse its discretion by precluding defendant's expert from testifying with regard to the effects of event stress on eyewitness identification.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for first-degree burglary and assault is affirmed where: 1) defendant's right to a trial by jury was not impaired by the trial court's failure to adhere to the statutory procedural protection for excusing potential jurors for hardship; 2) the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding defendant's third-party culpability evidence as not probative and speculative; and 3) the prosecutor's reference to defendant's gender in summation was inexcusable and irrelevant, but defense counsel's failure to object was not ineffective assistance of counsel.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an environmental action, challenging a Town Board's positive declaration under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and requiring a draft environmental impact statement, the trial court's dismissal of the petition is affirmed where the positive declaration is not justiciable and the case not ripe for judicial review.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a trusts and estates action, the Appellate Divisions' order is affirmed where defendant, the wife of decedent, founder of the Benihana restaurant chain, failed to raise a triable issue of fact that two irrevocable releases signed by decedent were signed as a result of fraud or other wrongful conduct.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a health action challenging the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPHRP)'s regulation prohibiting smoking in certain outdoor locations, the Appellate Division's order is affirmed where the OPRHP acted within the confines of legislation in enacting the regulation at issue.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for second-degree intentional murder is affirmed where defendant's attorney did not render ineffective assistance of counsel by failing to move to reopen the suppression hearing following a detective's trial testimony about his interview with defendant.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an insurance action, brought by plaintiff insurance companies seeking declaratory relief, the Appellate Division's order is affirmed where Insurance Law section 5102 does not require no-fault insurance carriers to pay a facility fee to reimburse New York State-accredited office-based surgery centers for the use of their facilities and related support services.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an injury and tort action, brought against defendants ABC News, a hospital, and attending physician for the nonconsensual filming and subsequent broadcast of decedent's treatment and death at the hospital, the Appellative Division's order is modified and affirmed where: 1) the broadcasting of the footage as part of a documentary series about medical trauma was not so extreme and outrageous as to support an intentional infliction of emotional distress claim; but 2) plaintiffs have stated a cause of action against the hospital and treating physician for breach of physician-patient confidentiality.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for multiple counts of robbery and larceny is affirmed where the People's use of defendant's non-privileged telephone conversations, made while in custody at Rikers Island, did not violate defendant's Sixth Amendment right to counsel and the dissemination of recordings of conversations at the District Attorney's request does not violate state law.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In a personal injury action, arising after plaintiff, a minor child, was exposed to lead at her grandmother's apartment where she was cared for during the day, the Supreme Court's dismissal of the complaint is affirmed where plaintiff child' did not 'reside' at her grandmother's apartment for the purposes of section 27-2013[h][1] of the Administrative Code of the City of NY, which requires landlords to remove lead-based paint in any dwelling in which a child six year of age and under resides.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for criminal sale of a controlled substance is affirmed where defendant was given a reasonable opportunity to object to the legality of his guilty plea and didn't do so, thus failing to preserve his claim challenging the validity of his plea.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for assaults and related offenses is affirmed where a parent or guardian can vicariously consent on behalf of a child to create an audio or video recording of a conversation to which the child is a party, pursuant to Penal Code section 250.00 (2), provided that the parent or guardian has a good faith, objectively reasonable basis to believe that it is necessary in order to serve the best interests of his or her minor child.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for first-degree murder and other crimes is affirmed. The Court held that New York's standard for admitting evidence of third-party culpability, articulated in People v. Primo, 96 N.Y.2d 351 (2001), is consistent with Holmes v. South Carolina, 547 U.S. 319 (2006) and does not infringe on a defendant's constitutional right to present a complete defense.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - Conviction for second-degree murder and fist degree assault is affirmed where the trial court did not err in refusing to remove three spectators, silently wearing t-shirts bearing a photograph of one of the victims, from the courtroom during summation at defense counsel's request.

(Court of Appeals of New York) - In an employment action, arising after a tenured teacher resigned his position to teach at another school and was subsequently terminated there, the Appellate Division's order is affirmed where New York City Board of Education Chancellor's Regulation C-205 paragraph 29 requires a written request to withdraw a prior resignation and petitioner did not strictly comply with its terms.